i think faroudja is the better chipset, evidenced by its presence in the 5900 and it and the 910s rave reviews on hometheaterhifi.com shootout. the 2900 is sweet too though. good luck with it.

Phiips DQ50 also has Faroudja chip set and the picture was gorgeous. It also had that annoying 2 second freez-frame once a movie. So there are other implementation issues that matters aside from the main engine. I have not seen any obvious faults with 2900.

At its B-stock price, there really is no better value universal player. I thought about going with a Sony since I have many SACD's and no DVD audio as of yet, but I wanted the option of being able to play DVD audio if I get some in the future. Now, I just have to find some time to enjoy it, but I've been on a vinyl kick lately, which take me to the 2-channel room away from TV.....

yeah totally i agree, although the layer change (that is the freeze frame you are talking about) on my 910 was rated poorly on hometheaterhifi and i find it to be acceptable. the good news is if you are watching burned movies you dont have to deal with the layer change because there is only one layer. double layer technology just came out in a burner but no discs...

I'll preface all of this with the statement that I've only recently moved up to a TV capable of handling progressive scan playback and am still using an interlaced player, so this is all based on what I've read. From what I recall of the Secrets shootouts, the Faroudja is considered one of the best (if not the best) deinterlacer. The Silicon Image chipset is not as good as the Faroudja for video material, but for film I understand them to be very comparable.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

First to B-Stock. From what I can tell, no difference whatsoever on the one I got. Cosmetically, no dents, dings, scratches. Even the connectors look new. The manual, oddly enough was worn. I would say I was disappointed in the manual as well. It is not very good. My old sony had a much more informative manual. They gloss over alot of the features and their description of the BM for DVD is horrible.
Overall pretty happy with the player. The video appears a little better, but I find video pretty hard to assess since I don't have a test disc. It does play a couple of DVD's my old sony would reject for some reason. Although the sony is a really old model.
I have listened a couple of ways. On the downstairs HT system in 2ch stereo/no sub 2 ch stereo/w sub and 5.1. So far, on the HT system my preference has been for 2ch/no sub. Not sure why, but I'm just not taken with the sub on for music. On some stuff, I'd like a little more thump, but the single sub just doesn't sound quite right. For movies, I don't notice much. The 5.1 just was not good for me. The mixes in 5.1 were inconsistent. (even on a single disk from one song to the next) I'll probably stear towards SACD stereo for now. More later